The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Are you juggling several therapies and feel like you can’t add one more thing? Well it is time to start working smarter not harder! In this fast paced workshop Bonnie Arnwine will share a variety of ways to make it easier to integrate sensory activities into a busy home life. Bonnie will look at each room in the home and it’s creative potential for sensory activities. Talk about set up ideas that will make clean up easier. Share ideas to extend activities and have lots of fun along the way. Working Smarter Not Harder is a workshop designed for parents or caregivers of autistic individuals who need sensory integration therapy. The primary goal of this workshop is to provide practical tips to make it easier for caregivers to integrate sensory activities into a busy home life. During the workshop caregivers will learn time saving set up and clean up tips. Participants will learn to use their home creatively to provide sensory experiences for the child throughout the day. Finally, they will learn three strategies to help extend sensory activities.

The workshop begins by going over practical strategies to help caregivers set up sensory-based activities in the home. These strategies include creating a small work area within a larger work area for easy clean up. For example, setting a large sheet on the floor in the living room (your large area) and placing a small bin of beans and rice in the middle of the sheet (the small area). Gathering ahead of time simple & inexpensive support materials to help with set up and clean up. These items include such things as blue painter's tape, newspaper, slip proof mats and more. Then we will examine average messy items and suggest ways to make them easier to work with by containing them differently or adding more soap to make them easier to clean up.

During the second section of the workshop participants will be encouraged to take a close look at each area of their home: dinning room table, kitchen, bathroom, living room and back yard. Participants will be guided through the process of assessing the pros and cons of each area in terms of a setting for sensory experiences. Sample activities will be suggested for each area along with suggested times to integrate the activities throughout the day.

Finally, participants will discover three principals for extending activities. (There is nothing more frustrating than spending lots of time preparing and setting up an activity that only holds a child's interest for a minute.) We will talk about breaking an activity into steps. Adding components one at a time starting with the least interesting component first. Slightly changing the activity by changing the theme or focus. We will finish with a list of suggested activities that call for common household items and are easy to set up and clean up. All of the material is straightforward and easy to understand and we have a lot of fun along the way.

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